Overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming is a major driver of antimicrobial resistance, which threatens both animal and human welfare globally, making stewardship programmes a welfare priority.
Antibiotic stewardship has a direct animal welfare dimension: reducing routine preventive antibiotic use requires farms to address the underlying conditions — overcrowding, poor biosecurity, nutritional stress — that make animals susceptible to disease. This is good for animal welfare. However, stewardship programmes must be accompanied by genuine improvements in husbandry rather than simply resulting in untreated sick animals. Well-designed stewardship programmes couple antibiotic reduction with enhanced veterinary farm health support, improved housing, and vaccination protocols, producing both better animal health outcomes and lower resistance risk. The link between good animal welfare and lower antibiotic use is increasingly well-established.